What is Art?

[jennythereader]

(Post inspired by a back episode of the Overthinking It Podcast)

How do you define art? Where do you draw the line between art and craft?

Personally, I define art as any creative work that lasts. That is, anything that people are still talking about and responding to years, decades, or even centuries after it was originally created.

A craft, on the other hand, is any work of creation that the person did with their full effort and skill.

Someone can be a craftsman* without being an artist, but it's rare for an artist to not also be a craftsman. In fact, I would suspect that many of the people that we now think of the great artists thought of themselves more as craftsmen.

What do you guys think?

(*Gender assigned because "craftsperson" looked clunky.)

Comments

[nounsandverbs]

The best thing I ever read about craft is from William Zinsser's "On Writing Well," but it can just as easily apply to any medium:

"You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do. Extending the metaphor of carpentry [to writing], it's first necessary to be able to saw wood neatly and to drive nails. Later you can bevel the edges or add elegant finials, if that's your taste. But you can never forget that you are practicing a craft that's based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart."

So "craft," for me, is the skill necessary to get the job done -- whether you're working in words, wood, or whatever. One can be a superlative craftsman and never create art -- which is no bad thing. If you put your craft in the service of something new, imaginative, different, unique, universal -- then you may rise to the level of Art-with-a-capital-A.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

That's more or less what I meant, but much more detailed and coherent. :)

[nounsandverbs]

And, more to the point, allowed me to quote Bill Zinsser, which I never pass up an opportunity to do. :)

[seawasp]

The problem with this metaphor (for me) is that it isn't anything like writing in my experience.

Writing is... well, it happens. I sit down, I think a bit, and words come out. Sometimes I fiddle with the words a little to make sure they come out exactly the way I want them to. But there's no "craft" in it that I can see, sense, or describe.

"Crafts" like carpentry, painting, beading, whatever, they take work and skill that would require years of hard, very unpleasant effort for me to master. And even if I became a master of it, I'd remember how it was to be a beginner without the first clue as to what was involved in doing this job.

[nounsandverbs]

The process of writing is different for everyone. What you describe is, for me, like the process of writing a first draft -- it just comes. After that, though, is where the "craft" comes in for me -- shaping and polishing what came out in its raw form. That process, for me, is often hard and unpleasant -- but invariably worth it.

[seawasp]

Which is again a major difference; to me the term "first draft" was clearly an invention of English teachers who couldn't figure out how to fill up time in their classes otherwise. I never did anything BUT one draft of any work for most of my life. So the idea of having that kind of refining, polishing, etc., wasn't ... *real* to me.

These days I may, on occasion, do a second draft, but it's only and solely in response to either (A) huge amounts of time passing between the first and second, so that the universe in my head's changed, or (B) because someone outside of me, and in a position to demand changes or to at least strongly suggest them, has pointed out things they think are problems with the text, and after looking at what they've pointed out I agree with them.

So maybe for you it IS a craft but for me it isn't...?

[nounsandverbs]

Yep, absolutely. It's different for everyone and every way is equally valid.